Wednesday, August 24, 2011

08/24/2011
Cutting to the chase, the
Senate has displayed the arrogance and abuse of power by detaining an
invited — not even summoned — resource person on the strength of its
members’ belief that Rowena del Rosario, a former bookkeeper of LTA
Inc., a firm owned by the Arroyos, was lying before the Senate blue
ribbon committee. The intention is to detain indefinitely — or until she
is forced to answer senators’ questions the way they want them
answered, which is for her to state that (a) former First Gentleman Jose
Miguel “Mike” Arroyo is the owner of the controversial pre-owned
helicopters, two of which were sold as brand new to the Philippine
National Police; and (b) that Mike Arroyo bought and not just leased the
choppers from Lion Air Inc., apart from his usinh his influence to get
the used choppers sold to the PNP as brand new.

Yet in a courtroom
hearing, even if the witness, under oath, testifies, whether true or
perjured, is not ordered arrested and detained indefinitely for lying,
merely because the judge and the prosecutor believe that the witness
lied. Besides, a witness can always choose to remain silent and is
constitutionally guaranteed not to incriminate himself..... MORE

08/24/2011
Noynoy, to this day, refuses
to apologize to the Hong Kong hostage victims and their relatives,
saying that an apology connotes that the state did these Hong Kongers
grievous harm when it was just one man and not the state that did them
harm.

Said Noynoy to reporters: “We deeply regret what has
transpired. An apology connotes that the state did them grievous harm. I
don’t think that is correct. This was the act of one man, the same
token that some of our citizens have been affected elsewhere in the
world, we do not blame the entire population. We know that there are
criminal elements, there are mentally deranged individuals that pose a
threat to anybody regardless of race or country of origin.”

Translated,
what Noynoy really is saying that he, as President and Commander in
Chief of all the country’s Armed Forces, refuses to accept any
responsibility and accountability for the botched hostage crisis.

Despite
the claim of Noynoy that the hostage-taking incident and the bloodbath
that occurred on Aug. 23, 2010, was the act of just one deranged man and
not an act of the state, he cannot deny the fact that while a crazed
gunman did take these hostages, and did shoot at least eight hostages
dead, he and his government botched the rescue operations, because the
core of the issue is not that a single man acted in taking as hostage
the Hong Kong tourists but that Noynoy and his government flubbed and
failed to contain the crisis. The botched rescue operation is the proof
of this..... MORE

08/24/2011
MANILA — In the fantasy world
created by Philippine publishing giant Precious Hearts Romances, the
men are rich, sexual promiscuity and homosexuals are taboo, and the
story always ends happily after 128 pages.

The ultra-cheap local
versions of Mills and Boon novels are the country’s most popular books,
making their authors champions of conservative Christian values and
unlikely heroes in the battle to improve literacy among the poor.

“Some
people say it’s trash, but at least they (the poor) read,” said Segundo
Matias, the boss of Precious Hearts, which churns out 50 titles monthly
to dominate a genre that has a readership estimated in the millions.
Priced
at P37 (about 87 cents) and written in street-level Tagalog, the books
emerged in the early 1980s when an economic crisis forced the importers
of western “chick literature” paperbacks to seek out alternatives.

Matias
told AFP from his Manila print shop that the local versions turned out
to be far more popular, partly because they were faster-paced..... MORE

08/24/2011
If last Monday’s hearing on
the PNP chopper deal is any indication, it’s open season at the Senate.
And it’s ugly. The way Senators Ping Lacson and Teofisto Guingona
boorishly coerced Rowena del Rosario, the former bookkeeper of LTA Inc.
and Negros Occidental Rep. Iggy Arroyo, you’d think they are into
hazing and not a congressional inquiry in aid of legislation. What
legislation are they contemplating anyway to let them bear hard on Del
Rosario to the point of detaining her at the upper chamber for
“evasiveness” and “telling lies?” Only the duo can tell.
In any
event, since when did answering the gentlemen’s questions properly if
not straight forwardly amount to evasion? It may be true, as they
claimed, that Del Rosario was not being straightforward since she did
not answer things to their satisfaction but that does not qualify for
evasiveness. Or even untruthfulness. She answered the questions didn’t
she? Was she supposed to know what the gentlemen had in mind and repeat
the same under oath in order to evade their wrath? I don’t think that
kind of fate should befall any resource person. Even if that person is
one the gentlemen have somewhat condemned as less-than-truthful for
being the assistant of someone they find contemptible in the first
place? That’s guilt-by-association and the last I heard there was
nothing in the statutes to qualify that as a crime, especially in a
congressional inquiry not a court of law..... MORE

08/24/2011
WASHINGTON — African-American
support for Barack Obama appears to be softening, because of a rocky
economy that has hit US blacks especially hard, and a perception that
the President has ignored the economic travails faced by this once
rock-solid pillar of his political base.

A Gallup poll last week
found Obama’s poll numbers in the African-American community down from
its once stratospheric 95 percent approval early in his term, to a
still-high, but notably lower 81 percent — tying his worst ever showing
from earlier this year.

Observers say softening support for Obama
is the result of a faltering economy that at 16 black percent
unemployment — compared to about nine percent for the population at
large — has hit the Africa American community especially hard.

“We’re
totally frustrated,” said US Rep. Elijah Cummings, a member of the
Congressional Black Caucus, speaking Sunday on CNN television’s State of
the Union program..... MORE

After
pocketing P5 million in a government check handed out by the
government’s chief peace negotiator Dean Marvic Leonen, the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front negotiating panel flatly rejected yesterday the
government’s counter-proposal on how to resolve the conflict between the
government and the MILF, ending the resumption of the peace talks a day
ahead of the actual negotiation schedule.

Leonen made this admission in a video conference with the Malacañang
media Tuesday despite the initial optimism expressed by President
Aquino who went all the way to Tokyo to secretly meet with MILF Chairman
Al Haj Murad Ebrahim purportedly to establish goodwill with the Moro
secessionist group.

Leonen however refused to accept that this
meant a failure of the Aquino government’s first formal negotiations
with the MILF and insisted that the 22-page document containing the
government position will still be submitted to the MILF Central
Committee for further review despite the fact that everything in it was
already rejected by the MILF peace panel headed Mohagher Iqbal..... MORE